Safe At Home (A Sermon for All Saints)

Scriptures:  Ruth 1:1-18, Psalm 24    Revelation 21:1-6,  John 11:17-44

Today is All Saints Day – in the German tradition, Totenfest – when we remember our departed loved ones, family members and friends and members of this congregation and of the wider church who have gone on to be with the Lord. A number of them are listed in the bulletin – but we all know many, many more whose names and memories we hold in our hearts, far too many to name at any one time.  It is on occasions such as All Saints that we truly remember how interconnected our lives are, how much our lives impact one another.  We do not live only for ourselves nor do our deaths affect only ourselves.  All of us hold memories of our loved ones who have passed – tender moments, funny stories – and sometimes sad memories as well, moments of misunderstanding and tension.  All these memories, for good and bad, are a part of what made our loved ones the unique individuals they were – and in God’s sight, still are.

The lives of our loved ones, and the memories we hold, the stories we tell about them are not only a part of our individual stories and the story of our church, but they are part of something much bigger, the “Great Story” of faith that began in the Garden of Eden and continues to this day, and will continue until time becomes eternity and we shall be with the Lord.  Many of you, especially the longtime members, have told me stories of those who shaped your faith – faithful ministers like Pastor Steinberg and Sunday School teachers like Mr. Bauer, stories of the members of the church who welcomed you when you came here as children – some of you clutching the nickels your parents gave you for Sunday school – and many of the longtimers still remember the verses you memorized for your confirmation, and who else was in your confirmation class.   And so the faith of those pastors and teachers lives on in you, in us.  On one level, our lives are fleeting – as the book of James says, we are like a mist that is here today and gone tomorrow.  But in God’s eyes, our lives, our stories, and those of our loved ones hold eternal significance.

We encounter two such stories, very human-scale stories, in our readings today.  In our reading from Ruth, we’re given a story about a family – and it’s a kind of blended family, with a Jewish mother named Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, both from Bethlehem in Judah, who were living in a foreign country, Moab.  They had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion who married local Moabite women.  Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and the two sons died as well – we’re told that their names, Mahlon and Chilion, respectively mean “Sickly” and “Frail”, and so the story tells us up front that we can’t expect them to go the distance.  So the Jewish mother is left with two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, all in deep shock and grief.  For those in our church, and I know there are some, who have lost multiple family members in just a short time, you know what this feels like – you feel immobilized, going from feeling numb to feeling like you’re going to cry and never stop.   In that patriarchal society, women were entirely dependent upon their men for survival, and a woman on her own had few respectable prospects for survival – to remarry if young and fortunate enough, and if not, to beg – and then there were more desperate options, such as prostitution.  We’re told that this story took place in the time of the Judges, which was sort of like the “wild wild west” of ancient Jewish history, a lawless time when everyone did what was right in his own eyes – in other words, every man for himself, every woman for herself.  And so these three devastated, immobilized, grieving women can expect no help whatsoever from their neighbors.  And, just to add one more layer of tragedy onto this story, we’re told there was a famine in the land of Moab – but, in a small note of hope, that Naomi had picked up on rumors that back home in Bethlehem, there was bread.  So Naomi plans to return home to Bethlehem, and she encourages her Moabite daughters-in-law to remain in Moab and remarry.  Both the daughters-in-law want to go with Naomi, but one of them, Orpah, eventually kisses Naomi and goes to her family’s home in Moab; her part in this story ends, and we hear no more of her.   But Ruth utters this extraordinary declaration of faithfulness to Naomi – “where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people and your God my God” ….even to the point of saying, “where you die, I will die, and there be buried.”  We’ll be reading more about this family and this story in coming weeks, but , spoiler alert, Ruth marries a Jewish man, Boaz, and her great-grandson would go on to become King David….and so for her faithfulness to Naomi, Ruth is forever remembered in the history of the Jewish people….and because Jesus was descended from King  David, Ruth becomes part of the Christian story as well.  Of course, Ruth expected none of this.  She just did what she saw as the right thing, the faithful thing, under very difficult circumstances.

In our Gospel reading, we hear about another family devastated by grief, two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus, who live in Bethany, a town two miles outside Jerusalem.  We’re told that Jesus had a special love for this family.   Word came to Jesus that Lazarus was ill…but strangely, Jesus delayed two days in going to see them.  By the time he makes his way to Bethany, Lazarus has died, and has been in the grave for four days.  He encounters first Martha and then Mary, and both say the same thing, “If only you’d been here, our brother would not have died.”  If only. But Martha hangs onto a sliver of hope, “Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask him.”  And Jesus says, “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha says, “Yes, I know, he’ll rise at the resurrection on the last day.”  And Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  Jesus says to Martha, basically, I’ve got this.  Do you trust me?  When he encounters the mourners, Jesus weeps – but then asks those there to roll away the stone, and raises Lazarus.   We’re told that after the raising of Lazarus, Mary and Martha and Lazarus gave a dinner for Jesus….and we’re also told that the religious authorities had plotted to kill Lazarus, just as they had been plotting to kill Jesus – but then we’re not told anything further about Lazarus.

These are two stories of how God provided comfort in time of grief. These are two stories of the saints of God….and on All Saints Day, we remember our saints – not only the famous saints such as St. Francis and St. Patrick, but all those anonymous but faithful people who have lived and died in the faith. 

We all have our own stories of how God has comforted us in times of grief.  It’s so hard to let go when a loved one goes to be with the Lord.  My father died just as I was beginning my time as pastor here at Emanuel….he’d been on dialysis for several years due to kidney failure, and then developed pancreatic cancer.  The pain of his pancreatic cancer quickly became more than he could live with, and so he stopped dialysis, and with the assistance of home hospice, he passed peacefully.   It went very quickly – Thanksgiving weekend 2007 my dad had been up patching a hole in the roof of his workshop, and by early January 2008 he was gone…..just a little over a month.    After he passed, I discovered by chance that I still had a voicemail from him on my cell phone….just a mundane voicemail from a few months before his death, saying he’d left the dialysis center and was going home, and he’d call back later.  Over the course of coming months, when I missed my dad, occasionally I’d play that voicemail.   Eventually the inevitable happened – after playing the voicemail, at the end, instead of hitting save, I hit delete, and so I accidentally erased it – and I guess it was at that moment when I could no longer play back that voicemail that I finally had to let go of my father for good.  But I also realized that, as much as I missed my dad, I wouldn’t have wanted him back as he’d been….the voice on that voicemail sounded old and tired, bone-weary tired, utterly drained, exhausted, and I wouldn’t want him back if it meant more suffering.  Finally I had to believe for myself the same thing I’d often told others, that all the suffering of his last few years was finally over, that he was in a better place, that he was with God – and for me, that was enough, and that is enough.  Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life…do you believe?”   Jesus telling me, “I’ve got this.  Do you trust me?”  It was enough for Martha, and it’s enough for me.

At a UCC meeting a number of years ago, the keynote speaker, Amy-Jill Levine, a noted Jewish author who wrote a book about Jesus called “The Misunderstood Jew”, said that Christianity was like football – the goal is to get into the endzone, into heaven – while Judaism is like baseball, where the batter is trying to get home – for the author, this is a reference to Jews needing to have a land to call home.  But as I was preparing this sermon, while I appreciated the point Amy-Jill Levine had made, I thought the baseball analogy also applied to Christians.   When we are born, we come from God, and when we pass from this life, we go back to God.  We’re remembered for what we do while we’re here – just as a baseball player is remembered or maybe forgotten based on his success in rounding the bases and playing in the outfield and such.  But those who pass from this life to be with the Lord, really are in essence going home. 

And what a home!  Our reading from Revelation gives us an amazing vision – “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I” – that is, John, the author – “heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’  And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ 

That’s the promise we remember on this All Saints day.  That’s the hope we cling to, that though we are but strangers and sojourners in this life, God has a home prepared for us, where we will live on in God’s presence.  May our words and actions bring glory to God and live on in the lives of those around us, until we are all safe at home indeed with God. Amen.

Seen and Heard (A Sermon for Reformation Sunday)

Scriptures: Job 42:1-17,  Psalm 126    Hebrews 7:23-28       Mark 10:46-52

Today is Reformation Sunday.  We celebrate Reformation  Sunday on the last Sunday of October, when we remember that Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, nailed a list of 95 theses, 95 opinions in which he disagreed with the Roman Catholic church of his day. Nowadays, he probably would have posted them to his wall on Facebook, but instead  he posted them to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany – and, as we’d say today, his post went viral.  Copies eventually made their way to Rome, and the Pope was sore displeased.  While Luther had no intention of leaving the Roman Catholic Church, in 1521 Luther was excommunicated,  and declared a heretic and deprived of the protection of law.    Despite all this, Luther’s opinions spread, and inspired other reformers, such as John Calvin, whose teachings inform the Presbyterian church, and Ulrich Zwingli, Zacharias Ursinus, and Caspar Olevianus, whose teachings inform our Reformed tradition.   As often happens, the reformers’ convictions about God’s grace quickly became entangled with secular politics, and there’s no need to recapitulate all the religious wars and other ugliness that ensued.  Now, nearly 500 years after Luther’s act, it would appear that some quarters of the Catholic Church itself has come to accept the validity of at least some of Luther’s teachings, particularly Luther’s teaching that we are justified by grace through faith[1] – a central affirmation of Lutheranism and of Protestantism in general, and a strong contrast to the teaching of the Catholic church under Leo X.  But in 1999, in a joint declaration with Lutherans, the Roman Catholic church affirmed that teaching. It’s notable that in a 2011 visit to the monastery in Erfurt, German where Martin Luther had lived, Pope Benedict XVI noted his appreciation for Luther’s deep faith, his focus on Jesus, and his emphasis on the importance of Scripture. Pope Benedict said that the question that occupied Luther:  “What is God’s position toward me, and where do I stand before God must, in some way, become our question too.”[2]

                                                                

Where do we stand before God?  Our Gospel reading is instructive.  It takes place as Jesus and the disciples are making their way to Jerusalem.  We’re told that they entered Jericho.  The next thing we’re told is that they were exiting Jericho.  We’re not told what happened in Jericho, except that as Jesus and the disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd was following them.   We’re also told that a blind beggar, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.  No doubt he heard the noise from the crowd, asked someone what was causing all the commotion, and was told it was Jesus of Nazareth. And Bartimaeus saw his chance: Mark’s gospel tells us that Bartimaeus started shouting “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”  “Son of David”….where did that come from?  It would seem that for a blind man, Bartimaeus had uncommon spiritual vision, to understand that Jesus was not just another traveling healer, but the Messiah who was promised.  Many around him tried to shut him up and suppress him, but instead Bartimaeus cranked up the volume:  “Son of David, have mercy upon me!”  Jesus stopped and said, “Call him here.”  Some in the crowd told Bartimaeus, “Take heart, get up; he is calling you.”  Throwing off his cloak – which he would have used for warmth, and also to collect the coins tossed his way – he sprang up and came to Jesus.   Jesus asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you.” Bartimaeus replied, “My teacher, let me see again.”  And Jesus said to Bartimaeus, “Go; your faith has made you well.”  We’re told that, “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

Where do we find ourselves in this story?  Do we find ourselves among the disciples, who in this story are in the background, following Jesus and taking in all that is happening?  Do we find ourselves with Bartimaeus, along the side of the road, needing healing?  Do we find ourselves among in the crowd telling Bartimaeus to shut his pie hole and let Jesus be on his way?  Where do we find ourselves in this story?  As it happens, this questions sounds strangely like the question that Pope Benedict said was of such importance to Martin Luther:  “What is God’s position toward me, and where do I stand before God.”

Martin Luther would likely have located himself as sitting next to Bartimaeus, a blind man in need of healing.  Blind man in need of healing, sinner in need of grace – the emphasis is on our need, and on Jesus’ power to save.  Before God, we are all of us broken and in need of healing; all of us sinner in need of saving – and it’s well to remember that our word “salvation” is related to our word “salvage”.  All have sinned and gone astray, and the creation itself groans in bondage, and Jesus is doing a salvage operation on a global scale.  Despite our brokenness, God loves and values us so much that God is willing to do everything possible to save us, to bring us back to wholeness.

Sometimes we forget who we are, and instead of sitting with Bartimaeus, we take our place with the crowds shouting for Bartimaeus to shut up.  We in the church are supposed to be leading people to Jesus, but sometimes we get in the way, particularly around people who don’t meet our specifications for what a church member should look like and sound like.  Not only in our own lives, but on a global scale, throughout history the church has gone through periods of complacency and false pride, when we forget just how moment-by-moment dependent on God we really are.  The Reformation took place during one of these moments, and there have been many others, in this country when slaves and their supporters shouted from the side of the road for liberation, and the mainstream church tried to shut down the conversation, when women and their supporters shouted from the side of the road to express the reality that they are fully created in the image of God just as men are, and the church tried to shut down the conversation; when poor people and black and brown people and immigrant people and people with disabilities and gay people shouted from the side of the road for mercy, shouting that the church was failing to fulfill its mission toward them, and the church tried to shut down the conversation.  In all these cases, like the crowds, the church tried to shut down the conversation, and in all these cases, like Bartimaeus, those on the side of the road cranked up the volume instead.  And that persistence has brought results, although one hopes that all struggles will not take the nearly 500 years that it took the Catholic church to recognize at least some truth in Luther’s writings.

It’s interesting to contrast the requests that people have made of Jesus in our Gospel readings over the past three weeks.  The nameless rich young man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, but when Jesus told him he had to leave his wealth behind, he was unwilling to follow.  James and John requested seats at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory, requests they were unworthy to make, and Jesus refused them.  Bartimaeus requests restoration of his eyesight, and it is granted to him.  Unlike the rich young man’s inability to leave his wealth behind, Bartimaeus did not hesitate to leave his filthy beggar’s cloak behind; somehow he knew he would not be needing it again.  

Jesus’ question to Bartimaeus is Jesus’ question to us:  What do you want me to do for you? In order to answer, we need to recognize our own need, our own brokenness.  And we too may have beggars cloaks that we need to leave behind, behaviors and attitudes that have enabled us to get by in our brokenness, but that will not be helpful in the new life to which Jesus is calling us.

After Jesus healed Bartimaeus, we’re told that “immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.  May God grant us spiritual vision to see all that God would show us. May we have eyes to see our neighbors who need healing, and who are calling us from the side of the road.  May we help them and not ignore them.  And where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.

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[1][1] http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html

[2] http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/world-news/detail/articolo/papa-pope-el-papa-germania-germay-alemania-ecumenismo-ecumenism-8346/

 

United With Christ

Scripture:       Isaiah 53:4-12            Romans 6:1-11

I Peter 3:13-22             Mark 10:32-45

When my sister and I were no longer infants, but still quite small, my parents wanted to take us on day trips.  So my mom and dad – mostly my dad, actually, would look around for places that a young child might enjoy.  My mom mostly wanted to go to the beach…..Wildwood was her all-purpose day trip.  But anyway, my parents would make plans – either to go to Wildwood if mom got her way, or to go on a day trip someplace closer if dad got his way.  But often, as it happened, neither of them got their way.  As it happens, my sister got car sick.  It wasn’t mild car-sickness either; my sister’s car sickness lasted for years, and was so bad that my parents sometimes would hardly get the car to the end of the driveway, and my sister would start saying “I don’t feel so good.”  (Of course, helpful older brother that I was, I asked my parents why we couldn’t just tie a big garbage bag around my sister’s neck and go on our trip anyway. When I was younger, I was helpful like that.) Week after week our parents would plan, and week after week my sister would get car sick.  Our parents wanted to take us out to Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster – it was an amusement park, with rides and a big monorail around the park - and had tried for years, but I don’t think we got there until I was at least 14 or 15, and my sister was 10 or 11.  While it was a great place for someone 10 or 11 years old, by the time I was 14 or 15, I was a little jaded, a little too old for the place. It was a great place for kids, but by then I was a kid no longer, at least in my own eyes.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus and the disciples are on a road trip to Jerusalem.  Jesus knows what’s at the end of the trip – and it’s not Dutch Wonderland.  But the kids……er, the disciples seem confused about what kind of road trip they’re on, or where it’ll end, or what’ll happen when they get there.

Let us be clear about what kind of road trip Jesus is on, and what’s at the end of it.  Jesus is going to Jerusalem.  He knows that when he gets there, he will be confronting the authorities, the powers that be, both religious and political.  He knows that these authorities will not like what he has to say. In fact, will totally reject what he has to say, root and branch.  And they will express their total rejection of Jesus and his message by arresting him, torturing him, trying him, sentencing him to death, and carrying out that sentence…and that after three days, Jesus would rise again.  Even while Jesus is telling his disciples all this, they are indulging in delusions of grandeur , fighting over who gets to sit next to Jesus on his throne!  Even while Jesus is trying to flash big red warning signs in their faces – WARNING WARNING DANGER DANGER – and telling them that he won’t be with them much longer, the disciples are fighting over who gets to sit in the cool kids’ seats.

The disciples had squabbled over this any number of times, so James and John want to nail down once and for all this matter of who gets to sit with the cool kids near Jesus, so they approach Jesus:  “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.”  If one of your kids came to you with a request like that, you’d expect trouble, and Jesus did as well…so he asked them, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory.”  Clearly Jesus knows they don’t know what they’re asking, and so he asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized?” And James and John say, “Yeah, sure, we’ve got it covered.”  And so Jesus tells them that they will indeed share his cup and his baptism – will indeed go through what he went through – but that assigning seats in glory wasn’t for him to grant….it would seem that Jesus was not in charge of the seating arrangements.  Of course, the other ten disciples were furious when they heard this – mostly because they hadn’t thought of it first.  But Jesus called them and said, “You know that among the Gentiles, their rulers lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But this is not how it will be among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and who ever wants to be first of all must be slave to all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

The Apostle Paul tells us that when we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus’ death, so that if we suffer a death like that of Jesus, we will also experience a resurrection like that of Jesus.  The image of baptism is not only one of cleansing from sin, but actually one of our sinful nature being drowned in the waters of baptism, so that we come out of the water clothed in Christ. 

We think of baptism as a one-time event, in many traditions something done for us on request of our parents when we’re very young; in other traditions something done when are of sufficient age to understand the baptismal vows.  And indeed, in our tradition and in most traditions, baptism is a one-time event, something not to be repeated – when we leave one congregation to join another congregation, we may reaffirm our baptismal vows, but we don’t get re-baptized all over again.  But while baptism is done only once, I believe it’s not just a ceremony for that one day, but an invitation to begin a journey, a lifelong journey, with Jesus Christ.  Serving. Giving.  Suffering.  Dying.  Rising.  This was the pattern of Jesus’ journey through life, and it is the pattern of the journey through life to which we are invited.   Like the disciples, we tend to focus on the glory – getting to heaven, having the big seats up front near Jesus’ throne.  Our tendency is to want the crown, but to bypass the cross.  But the only way to Easter is through Good Friday.  And so, like Jesus asking the disciples “are you able to drink the cup I am to drink, and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized”, the candidates for baptism are asked questions:  Will you encourage these children to renounce the powers of evil and to receive the freedom of new life in Christ?   Will you teach these children to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?  And then there are promises, not for the child, but for the parents and godparents: Do you promise by the grace of God, to be Christ’s disciple?  Do you promise to grow in the Christian faith?  The parents and godparents cannot fulfill their promises to raise their children in the Christian faith if they their own faith is not active and growing.  And then, because we do not ask parents and children to make this journey alone, the church also promises its love, support, and care to those to be baptized and their parents and godparents.

And so, in baptism, we are in effect strapped by our seatbelts into the car with Jesus, to be with Jesus in our journey in life, just as our parents strapped my sister and I into the car before trying to take us on a day trip.   Being with Jesus can be, at the very same time, the scariest place to be and the safest place to be.  Following Jesus may take us to some very strange places, even some very threatening places.   It may feel at times like we’re in one of those rides where we’re spinning around really fast, and then the floor falls out, and we want to start screaming…and  yet eventually the floor comes back up, the ride slows down and stops, and we get off safe.  And like my sister, our nerve may fail us from time to time, and we may experience some spiritual carsickness along the way, when we just can’t move forward another inch and just need some space to regain our equilibrium.  And yet because we are with Jesus, ultimately we will be ok, as we are joined with Jesus in our dying and in our rising.    

And so baptism is the beginning of a journey.   For those to be baptized and their parents and godparents, are you ready?  Are you ready to begin your trip, a lifelong journey with Jesus?  For this congregation, are you ready to begin a lifelong journey of supporting those to be baptized?  If so, let us begin.  Amen.